LastingAware The greatest movie ever!

SeeQuant Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

elicopperman Back in the mid 1960s, a Texas fertilizer and insurance salesman named Harold P. Warren made a bet with screenwriter Stirling Silliphant (writer of In the Heat of the Night) that anyone can make a horror movie. Soon afterwards, Warren created his own horror movie on a budget of $19,000, with random people cast to play the characters, and a 16mm camera that could not record sound, causing the film to be dubbed in post. The result was Manos: The Hands of Fate (literally translated to Hands: The Hands of Fate), which despite going largely unnoticed for many years due to only playing in drive-ins and one Texas theater, it soon developed a cult following after MST3K lampooned it and turned it into a famously bad film. Me personally, I wish this film would remain obscure, for it's not even so bad it's funny, it's just pathetic.The film revolves around a vacationing family who end up getting trapped at a lodge run by a pagan cult, and they try to flee them as the cult's members decide what to do to them. Now this plot may seem really basic on paper, but with the right amount of pacing and momentum, this film could elevate its thin narrative into something with lots of substance....that is not what happened. Really, the whole movie could be cut down into 10 minutes, not only because of several insignificant scenes, but also because it drags certain moments on for no reason. There are many times when characters just stand around doing nothing even after they're done talking, and it becomes very awkward and even frustrating to watch. In addition, a whole mini plot with a couple making out in a car feels like it belongs in a completely different movie. Even an out of place catfight breaks lose with the cult master's wives, showing off pure incompetent storytelling as far as the eyes can see.Now I'm well aware that Warren could only use nobodies to play the characters, but ho'boy does nobody look like they have any idea what they're doing. Warren plays the main character Mike, and it looks like he's trying to figure out what to do on set rather than giving a performance. Same can be said about the rest, especially Mike's wife Margaret, the daughter, and the infamous Torgo. Speaking of Torgo, he's probably the most interesting character in the film from his design alone, mainly because his actor John Reynolds was high when he played the character, making his scenes hysterical but also questionable. The only other actor who seems to be having some resemblance of fun is the one playing the cult master, but he feels like a hammy cartoon villain with all the wackiness sucked out. Also, it is painfully obvious that the movie was dubbed in post, down to the young daughter clearly being voiced by a grown woman, but they had to work with what they were given, so I'm sure they tried in that aspect.Lastly, in spite of the shoe string budget, there's way too many infamous technical deficiencies to behold. Probably the biggest sin is the editing and continuity flaws, showcasing the never ending scenes and confusing side narratives that have nothing to do with anything. There's even a moment where you can clearly see the clapperboard right when the film cuts to the makeout couple. In terms of story errors, Torgo is supposed to be a satyr, so John Reynolds wore metallic rigging, but he accidentally wore it backwards which made him look more like a man with oversized knees. Also, it is never once mentioned in the film that Torgo is a satyr, so anyone watching this film will forever see him as some weird deformity. Not to mention, the soundtrack is poorly synchronized, and they even repeat the same tracks and voice recordings multiple times just to pad things out. Lastly, the whole opening showing the family driving feels like it was meant to have opening credits that were never added in, proving that the best solution would have been to trim the scene down, like the rest of the movie.Overall, Manos is a painfully incompetent and abysmal watch that can only be admired by Mystery Science Theater and RiffTrax fans for its disastrous technical failures and horrendous writing and acting. It's true what they say, nobody ever sets out to make a bad movie, and I admittedly do respect Harold P. Warren for actually making this film out of a bet, no matter how incomplete it is. Besides, plenty of filmmakers have proven to make their own successful horror movies on shoe string budgets, such as George Romero with The Living Dead series, John Carpenter with Halloween, Peter Jackson with Bad Taste, Sam Raimi with The Evil Dead, and more. However, given that those people have talent and experience in film-making, Manos is an example of why films need to be made by people who actually have some background in the techniques of crafting films, not fertilizer salesmen who make bets with Hollywood writers with a rich profile. Unless you're a cynic who adores riffing on the worst of the worst, I think Manos is better off left deep in the heart of Texas where nobody will ever seen it again.

Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki This, one of the Bottom 3 films of all time, was screened last week in New York, where it likely made more money than in its original theatrical run. I spent about two-thirds of the film's run time shouting " What is this god-damned movie even about? " For its final third, I didn't care what it was about, I just wanted it to end. Seriously, I couldn't even tell you what genre this film could be classified as, nor could I tell you what the plot is about.Apparently, filmed in a matter of days, on a budget of only a few thousand dollars, and screened only a couple of times in El Paso ( where it was filmed ) , and then lost for decades, until its rediscovery by Mystery Science Theatre 3000, this is seriously one of the worst, most excruciatingly boring films ever made. It's barely even mockable, let alone reviewable. The music score consists of competing sax, and ivories being tickled in the most obtuse, out of place fashion, seemingly intended for some other movie, and it's used throughout almost every scene. Most times​ I've heard the title/ lead character's name spoken, it's MAN-os, but in the dialogue in the film, it's pronounced like MAH-nos. However his name is correctly pronounced, I kept waiting for his dog to bite him. No such luck.A middle aged nuclear family ( a grumpy old man in ridiculously over-sized trousers, his whiny, nagging wife, and their young daughter, who serves absolutely no purpose in the plot of film ) are driving in the desert ( for the first nine minutes of this movie ) and lose their way. They babble about the weather, are stopped about a broken taillight by a cop with nothing else to do, who later hassles a young couple kissing in a parked car ( and the visible guy holding the clapperboard ) on the roadside. The female half of this couple is clearly bored, as she repeatedly delivers her lines while looking directly into the camera. Was this nine minutes long scene really necessary in setting up the plot of this movie? The family comes across some type of home, inhabited by Torgo, a 25 years old man in old age make-up ( because that always works so well ) , hobbling around, who repeats almost every line of dialogue twice. After their car won't start, they're stuck in this desert overnight, where slightly weird, but mostly just interminably boring, things happen. Torgo tells them " The Master " is dead, but eventually, a hidden, sort of Satanic-looking room is found, where " The Master " is shown apparently alive after all. He's a John Astin lookalike in black robe with red hands, acting grandiose, in front of a group of women, who do little more than sit around and talk for several scenes, before a catfight erupts. The family from the first half disappears for most of this second half, while the John Astin clone and his six wives do ... stuff, ... possibly killing Torgo, because yeah, sure, of course they do. The kissing couple appear again, at night. It looks like they're parked next to a gas station, judging by the lighting equipment reflected on their car. About an hour in, it's revealed the father from the first half has a gun... ( ! ) He's been armed for this entire time? He shoots ( shoots at? ) The Master, then for some reason, a lesbian couple is introduced in the last scene, and it appears as though the entire plot is starting again, as this pair of girls get lost, with writer/ director/ producer/ star Harold Warren standing in for Torgo. A lame joke in the closing credits reads, " The end? "Yes, it is mercifully the end. " Our sincere thanks to the city & county of El Paso for their cooperation " I bet they just LOVE having their name attached to this one.I then shouted at the screen, " What? " It even has 666 in its url!

morganstephens512 This truly is one of the worst movies that I have ever seen in my life. I don't think that I would be able to say that it is the worst since there were a lot of real duds that I have seen. But this is still probably like in the bottom like ten or five movies that I have seen. But that won't really make any sense if I don't explain why that is the problem. Well first off the whole thing with Torgo was just so over the top that I don't think that you could really be able to go on and call it a good performance. And the whole walking thing made the problem even worse than it already was. And many people would go on and try to call this the best part of this darn movie. Which is nothing more than a sign of how bad this movie is really. I can't be able to watch a single moment with the so called master and take him seriously. He is basically the play boy of horror. A old man who has a bunch of younger wives and it even gets to the point in which he marries a six year old girl at the end of the movie. Who in real life is actually his daughter which makes it even worse to watch.One thing I will say in the defense of this movie though was that the budget and making of this movie was so poor that they had no choice but to use a camera that only could lead to 34 seconds of footage being recorded in each session or else it wouldn't record anything over. Since the movie is like 74 minutes, that is like a good one hundred twenty sessions that they had to record. Overall, this movie has a terrible plot that makes no sense, a bunch of horrible acting, a ending that is beyond every definition of awful and just makes me a little bit sick to even go on and think about it at all. I know that I probably over blow it when I say that, but is the truth. Nothing about this film could be classified as good and the only thing I could say to defend it was based off of a technical issue more than anything else. I would say only watch this if you want to see one of the worst movies of all time.

younghr While not the worst of the worst (there"s still a few out there vying for that title) Manos is like making a sub sandwich then finding out the bread has mold. The plot had potential but was wasted on bad shooting, acting, sets and costumes. Who exactly is this Master? Does he sleep like Dracula in the open air? Is Torgo retarded or evil? Is the hero, Micheal, a complete moron? Why the tour of a boring Texas landscape? What evil cult leader actually choses southern Texas as his base of operations? So many questions, so little concern. What does the Master want with all those wives when he appears to be a dork? I give it 2 1/2 thumbs down. Best viewed after 3 beers.